Haiti - Island Country with a History of Suffering

condensed from a letter by Rick Martin

Haiti is a very poor country. A recent report rated countries according to human suffering. Out of more than 200 countries, Haiti was the third worst.

Haiti has long had a history of suffering and poverty. In the 1500’s, France and Spain had a war over the island of Hispaniola. When the war was over, half of the island was controlled by Spain. Today it is known as the Dominican Republic. The other half, controlled by France, was Haiti. The French colonists came by the thousands. The native Indians almost all died as a result of diseases brought by the French (such as the flu) because they had no resistance. The French then brought thousands of slaves from Senegal, Africa.

In 1804 the slaves rose up and drove out the French. Since that time there have been many dictators in the country. In 1991, a leftest Catholic priest named Jean-Bertrard Aristide became president. The missionaries and Haitians in Haiti say he won because he terrorized the people during the election with a tactic called “necklacing.” His followers would drag those that opposed him into public plazas and put automobile tires around their necks. Then they would pour gasoline all over them and burn them to death. After coming into office, Aristide began to do this to his opponents. Finally in September of 1991, after publicly saying on television that “necklacing is a beautiful tool in our hands” to purge his opponents, the military sent him into exile.

The practice of voodoo and witchcraft is everywhere. A survey of the country would reveal signs of it in every village. Colorful flags on the side of the road promote the “LOA” which is like a revival service for the evil spirits.

People will walk for many kilometers to attend the LOA. The services are always at night, all night, and the people sleep during the day. The people gather and begin to pray that the spirits will come. When the spirit does come, it comes into one of the participants and no one wants to be the one because the evil spirit really torments them. They pray to the evil spirit just like you and I would pray to the Lord. The people will make a vow to owe the evil spirit something very valuable if he will answer their prayer.

They owe this debt, which is very hard to pay, to the voodoo priest. It may be a pig or an amount of money, and often when they die this debt is passed down to their children. This is the way the devil keeps so many in bondage. Missionaries have witnessed to a great number of people who owed the voodoo priest something, and not one of them ever recieved Christ. Often they would explain to him with tears, “We want to accept Jesus, but we owe!”

The voodoo priests often own “zombies.” These are people that they poison with a certain potion that makes a person look dead. The person does not look like he is breathing. The priest tells the people he will bring the person back from the dead. After several days in a casket, underground, the poison wears off a little. Usually the person is alive when they dig them up and the people are simply terrified at the “power” of the voodoo priest. The person (now a “zombie”) is a slave to the master—the voodoo priest—for the rest of his or her life. The priest continues to give small amounts of this poison to keep the brain almost dead, although the physical body can do hard labor. The voodoo priests chain the zombies up at night and treat them like animals.

That is sad but praise the Lord that most people in Haiti do not “owe” the priests and are open to the Gospel.

The only real solution to the poverty, demonic presence, and political chaos in Haiti is the Gospel of Christ. The Haitians are willing to walk long distances to hear the preaching of Christ. The next two articles bear testimony to the power of the Gospel to change lives in a seemingly hopeless situation.